Spoilers Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) - Full Spoiler & Review Thread

[Sehlat Vie]

When that happens at my cinema they usually just give everyone a voucher for a free showing. They even did it once when the 3D was misaligned for a second. I’m didn’t even notice.
I still have memories of watching Mummy Returns and the film biting out right at the end. Someone had to cut that section out and reattach the film. I think we missed only a few seconds but they still gave us a free voucher. They were valuable back then since you had to pay exorbitant prices to watch a movie. Now it’s like £7

They offered vouchers, but the theater has really gone to seed. I used to go there a lot in pre pandemic days, and they used to have a lot of technical snafus like this. If and when I decide to return to theaters, I think I'll go to a better one. I only went to that one because it was the closest one with an IMAX auditorium.

 

[JD]

General Ardman said that Pandora is being colonized to become the new Human homeworld. I doubt the settlers would be find with wearing a breathing mask when we already have the technology to affect a planetary atmosphere today.

Oh thanks, I guess I missed that line.
To go back to the way the humans on Pandora are acting, I thought of a perfect modern example, elephants. They're incredibly intelligent animals, but are still killed on a regular basis for their ivory.

 

[Aragorn]

Like the movie, don't love the movie. Same with the first Avatar. As a spectacle it's incredible to watch. As far as plot and character, it's perfectly acceptable, nothing special. The kids had the most interesting stuff to do. Sully was a generic character well-suited for a generic actor. Zoe Saldana got the short end of the stick. At least Stephen Lang got to chew a little scenery.

Also, the live-actor parts were like watching a flatscreen TV out of the box with the soap opera effect still on.

 

[YellowSubmarine]

Pandora would definitely be easier to terraform than Mars, even with the distance involved. One of the issues I have in real life with the "space colonization as lifeboat for humanity" idea is that it is essentially impossible for anything to happen to Earth that would make it more uninhabitable than Mars, Venus, Europa, Titan, and so on. Like, it is so difficult to make some other body in our solar system livable that under virtually any contingency, it would be easier to repair Earth (or build some sort of shelter or emergency supplies here to prepare for an extreme disaster) than turn another planet into a remotely acceptable facsimile.

It seems like the major barrier to humans living on Pandora is the somewhat-poisonous atmosphere, and the very unforgiving wildlife, both of which are solvable, and potentially, more solvable than fixing Earth up from the kind of total environmental collapse seen in the extended cut of the first movie. Like, if terraforming Mars was an option, they could do whatever they'd do there on Earth and make life a whole lot easier since they aren't starting totally from scratch.

The bigger hurdle would be bringing the people from one planet to another. Transporting everyone might be harder than terraforming, especially if they indeed stopped mining the superconductor (as opposed to paused) and moved into a new thing to extract. I suspect that's not an issue, because they would be moving only special people, but that just goes to show the general has been misunderstood as to the scope and extend of the new operation.

Also we shouldn't limit the story possibilities with assumptions about terraforming that might not hold true in the real world. We can suspect how it would go, but without empirically testing reality we can't be sure. For example, it might be so that removing things from an atmosphere can be prohibitively more expensive than adding desired things to it, exists that scale may exist for the latter. For non-terraforming levels of change, that is actually true. If it the difference is even starker, it might be so that terraforming Mars would be easier than Pandora or Earth. Probably not, but a story can do it and still remain realistic enough. (Limiting yourself to only what you know is possible is how your futuristic movies end up not having cellphones in them.)

Conversely, the possibility that the more wealthy who want to quit Earth are finding Pandora cheaper and easier seems perfectly plausible. I have no questions about that. I'm more surprised they found a second thing to mine, and it's somehow an immortality serum. That such a special gland can appear on an animal born in this particular crazy biosphere and geology, is no surprise, but that it would have any positive effect on human biology is weird, and that the effect would be reversing aging is beyond weird, and too much of a coincidence there.

By the way, I wonder, can a CO₂ scrubber be useful for extending breathing under water like it did in the movie? Asking for real-world applications.

 

[John Clark]

When that happens at my cinema they usually just give everyone a voucher for a free showing. They even did it once when the 3D was misaligned for a second. I’m didn’t even notice.
I still have memories of watching Mummy Returns and the film biting out right at the end. Someone had to cut that section out and reattach the film. I think we missed only a few seconds but they still gave us a free voucher. They were valuable back then since you had to pay exorbitant prices to watch a movie. Now it’s like £7

Did something similar with one of the films we went to see (in 2d) - The only other screen until repaired was in 3d so we got to see it that way instead.

 

[David cgc]

By the way, I wonder, can a CO₂ scrubber be useful for extending breathing under water like it did in the movie? Asking for real-world applications.

Apparently, scrubbers aren’t just a standard part of rebreathers, chemical CO₂ absorption for working underwater predates oxygen tanks by hundreds of years. https://gue.com/blog/too-much-to-absorb-what-you-need-to-know-about-your-scrubber/

 

[NCC-73515]

I tried to see it yesterday; the IMAX system broke down.
I went home.

After the hassle of getting a refund, and the traffic to and from, I was immediately reminded of why I hadn't missed going to the movies for these past 22 months.

Our theater had a bright elongated T shape across the picture. Many people sneezing a lot, one coughing wildly, all without masks of course, well all except me, but the worst thing was the pair of guys sitting next to me (actually on the seat I booked), who loudly talked and talked all the time, looking at their phones, not even looking at the movie. During the ship sinking scene, I finally had enough and asked them to be quiet, and why they pay for a movie on its pre-opening night if they don't even pay attention at all. You can imagine the response: HELL NO!! FUCK YOU!! MOVE AWAY!!

That's why the lockdown with no people around was actually kinda nice.

They were actually quieter then, I guess the other guy who didn't scream insults had some influence and understood, and they got up and left before the big climax

 

[JD]

Wow, I guess I've been lucky, I've never had that bad of an experience. This time we were sandwiched between two groups of people on either side of us, and they were all perfectly fine.

I remember one thing I was a little surprised didn't happen, I was expecting the marine biologist to switch sides before the end. He seemed pretty disgusted by what was happening, so I kept expecting him to turn on the ship's captain and Quaritch, free Spider, and go join the Metkayina,

 

[Lakenheath 72]

I saw it a third time today.

The RDA is still mining for that thing mentioned in the first movie, as mines are briefly mentioned in the debriefing by the general.

The clan that the Sully family fled to embodied the spirit of the poem "First they came..." (First they came ... - Wikipedia) from decades ago. They knew that the Sky People were hunting tulkun, but this was "far to the south".

I know that people do not like the middle act, with the exploration of the clan and its environment. I feel differently, as I see this act as laying the groundwork for what comes in the final act. If it was removed, I imagine that people would be asking questions about the whale who came to the aid of the Navi, the ability of Kiri to control the native fauna and flora, etc.

 

[NCC-73515]

I remember one thing I was a little surprised didn't happen, I was expecting the marine biologist to switch sides before the end. He seemed pretty disgusted by what was happening, so I kept expecting him to turn on the ship's captain and Quaritch, free Spider, and go join the Metkayina,

Yeah, I expected the same - perhaps there's a deleted scene where he tries to rebel

I know that people do not like the middle act, with the exploration of the clan and its environment. I feel differently, as I see this act as laying the groundwork for what comes in the final act. If it was removed, I imagine that people would be asking questions about the whale who came to the aid of the Navi, the ability of Kiri to control the native fauna and flora, etc.

I don't even need all that battle stuff or anything with Quaritch at all
In the first one, I also thought the first half was so much better than the second half.
Just let me immerse myself in the beautiful world, show all the wildlife and how it glows in the dark. There are enough battle scenes in most other movies, and they're kinda always the same.

 

[thribs]

Problem I have with the middle scenes is that it just felt the same as the first movie when they explored their tribe. Just underwater

 

[valkyrie013]

Well, according to the Wiki,
There are 20 Billion on Earth. There are Mars Colonies.
There is Zero chance of moving 20 Billion people off Earth. Pandora is only for Elite and the lucky.

 

[thribs]

20 billion sounds a lot but there are still quite a few empty spaces on Earth that could fit them. Mongolia for instance.

 

[JD]

I can't remember where, but I did read in an intertview the other day that each movie will focus on a new clan in a new biome of Pandora. We will still see characters from the previous movies though, and we already know the Metkayina will back for #3.
We did the jungle for 1 and the oceans for 2, so I wonder what #3 will focus on? My first thought is either plains or desert maybe.

 

[NCC-73515]

Avatar 3: The way of air (floating mountain culture)
Avatar 4: The way of sand (desert culture)
Avatar 5: The way of mud (swamp culture)
Avatar 6 The way of ice (arctic culture)

 

[JD]

Swamps could be fun, but after the jungle and the ocean, I'd rather go for something as far from either of those as possible.

 

[thribs]

We need to see the Fire and Air Tribes next.

 

[NCC-73515]

The fire reflections on the Na'vi skin and the water surface looked great

 

[MakeshiftPython]

Problem I have with the middle scenes is that it just felt the same as the first movie when they explored their tribe. Just underwater

Doesn't surprise me that Cameron repeated the beats of the original. Both ALIENS and TERMINATOR 2 basically repeat the structure of the original films but with new dynamics added in.

Unlike with those franchises, Cameron had never done a third film, and my understanding is that he's going to do a lot more new with 3 rather than simply rehash the formula with twists.

 

[Awesome Possum]

Well, according to the Wiki,
There are 20 Billion on Earth. There are Mars Colonies.
There is Zero chance of moving 20 Billion people off Earth. Pandora is only for Elite and the lucky.

That would be fitting for the world depicted in Avatar. A world where there is a treatment for paralysis but only for the rich and definitely not given away to a wounded marine who fought in a war over dwindling resources on a dying planet.

The rich and powerful are going to abandon most of the population to die in the mess they created and profited from, then go do it again on Pandora. Anyone else is only there because they’re useful and they need laborers.